That German Christmas market feeling. That every year at this time of year Christmas market feeling.
Holly, wreaths, bells ringing, people screaming, suspicious packages, evacuations, Islamists being arrested…
German police said on Saturday that they had asked visitors to Berlin’s Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz to leave the area after receiving information about suspicious objects.
Beide Männer gehören zur Salafisten-Szene.
You can’t just go giving people the freedom to choose. Look at this Brexit mess, for example.
And this applies all the more when it comes to new business models in Germany. Especially if they come from US-Amerika. Then you would have Amerikanische Verhältnisse here in no time. And we certainly don’t want that. Once you start allowing customers to decide for themselves what services they prefer to use it’ll be Brexit all over again. Business Brexit. At least for the old overpriced, highly protected and monopolized business models so popular here in Germany, I mean.
Uber Hit With Fresh German Ban – After its core service was banned in 2015, Uber had begun offering rides through car-for-hire services
A regional court in Germany frustrated Uber Technologies Inc. UBER’s efforts to mount a comeback in the country, adding to regulatory pressure on the ride-hailing company, particularly in Europe.
Thursday’s ruling by a regional court in Frankfurt marks a fresh setback for the San Francisco-based transportation company, which is trying to repair its reputation among regulators after expanding rapidly and challenging local transport laws where it operated.
Among the countries that have been the most resistant to Uber is Germany, where the company had been experimenting with ways to overcome a nationwide ban imposed in 2015.
That’s a shocker. Gee. I wonder why?
It’s not like the arrogance and hubris of EU technocrats let the second biggest contributor to their budget walk away from their, well, generous redistribution system or anything. No, not at all. It’s… What is it, anyway? Is this still the Europe you want, Germany?
The U.K. was a strong proponent of free-trade, EU enlargement and pragmatic cooperation to tackle security threats. It opposed a “fortress Europe” approach, pushing for a competitive and open economy.
Britain also became in recent years the EU’s second-biggest net funder. EU officials say the U.K.’s departure will leave an estimated €84 billion ($93 billion) hole in the bloc’s next seven-year budget.
Agreeing on the size and makeup of that €1 trillion-plus budget will be the first major post-Brexit fight. Efforts to cut the amount of money spent on the EU’s newer members in Central and Eastern Europe risk further embittering the bloc’s east-west relations, already scarred by fights over migration and democratic norms.
To get your password? And where’s your passport? How do we know you’re you?
German University Forced to Hand Out 38,000 Passwords in Person – Password resets are usually pretty straightforward. But a university in Germany is requiring every student to line up and personally pick up their passwords for the school’s email system following a malware attack.
The University of Giessen is making the odd request because the school is a member of a German research network with strict rules. As a result, the university must follow legal requirements that ensure the new passwords are handed to the real owner, and not someone else, it explained in a notice.
“There is no alternative to this procedure.”
To let German service members ride their country’s trains for free.
None of the Bundeswehr’s transportation systems work so this way they’ll still be able to make it to combat operations on time. Although, on the other hand, Germany’s railway isn’t the most reliable these days either.
German service members in uniform and their children will be allowed to travel for free on trains in Germany, beginning next month. Germany’s minister of defense and the head of Deutsche Bahn came to an agreement Monday in Berlin, allowing military members from each branch to ride all of the national railroad service’s trains at no cost, together with their children up to the age of 14. Spouses will still have to pay their own way, a German Defense Ministry spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Don’t ask. It’s a German thing.
Germans Agree CO2 Taxes Aren’t High Enough and Want to Pay More – Germans say they’re ready pay a higher national levy on carbon pollution after utilities and policy makers joined climate activists in rebelling against proposed below-market rates deemed insufficient to fight climate change…
Merkel said the levy was the “centerpiece” of her government’s move to get Germany back on track to cut emissions.
Now if we could only get Merkel & Co. to cut their emissions. German oddity 10: Germans have more words for taxation than Eskimos have for snow.
Madrid, actually. But once she got to Germany nobody offered her a place to sit.
Nobody needed to. She also had a first class ticket. But that’s beside the point or something. I just don’t get it. Doesn’t Greta HERSELF have her own special train or, you know, mobile field headquarters or something along those lines?
Climate activist Greta Thunberg and Germany’s national railway company created a tweetstorm Sunday after she posted a photo of herself sitting on the floor of a train surrounded by lots of bags.
The image has drawn plenty of comment online about the performance of German railways.
Wir wünschen #Greta eine gute Heimfahrt. Und arbeiten weiter hart an mehr Zügen, Verbindungen und Sitzplätzen.
That means a shortage of skilled specialists.
And Angela Merkel HERSELF has warned Germans of a possible exodus of businesses from Germany if nothing is done about this acute problem.
Doesn’t really make sense, though. She brought around two million skilled specialists into the country not all too long ago, or at least that’s how the German media and others painted it. And some 200,000 skilled specialists keep pouring into Germany each and every year. Surely there must be some misunderstanding here somewhere, some disconnect.
Weil kein qualifiziertes Personal gefunden wird, bleiben viele Stellen in deutschen Betrieben unbesetzt. Die Kanzlerin fordert eine Lösung für den Fachkräftemangel. Ansonsten drohten drastische Folgen.
That means financial transactions tax.
And that means, as usual, taxing the little guy tying to get ahead while letting the big time speculators off the hook. All in the name of Social Justice. Or Social Democracy (SPD), if you prefer.
Germany Pushes Forward on European Financial Transactions Tax – Under a new blueprint for the tax, sent by Germany Finance Minister Olaf Scholz to the other governments on Monday and seen by The Wall Street Journal, anyone buying shares in large companies domiciled in those countries and with a market value of over €1 billion ($1.1 billion) will have to pay a minimum 0.2% tax over the transaction value…
Germany is under some time pressure to deliver an agreement since the government has already earmarked the expected proceeds to pay for higher state pensions for the poor starting in 2021. It expects revenues of about €1.5 billion a year from the tax.
Germans have more words for taxation than Eskimos have for snow.
Building will come to a complete standstill in Berlin too.
But Berlin’s red-redder-green politicians (SPD, the Left Party, the Greens) don’t know anything about building (look at the state the city of Berlin is in). They can only tear things down. Oh, yes. And redistribute. They will redistribute for as long as it takes to get anybody who’s got anything to get out of town.
Berlin Builders Hit the Streets in Backlash Over Rent Freeze – The German capital’s government is trying to ease the burden on tenants after a property boom caused rents to double over the past decade. However, critics of the plan — including economists and large landlords — have said the only way to address growing demand for housing is to build more homes.
The rent-freeze legislation will start its passage through Berlin’s parliament this week and is expected to come into force in the first quarter of next year…
The city’s plans “threaten to cause considerable damage to both the housing market and Berlin as a whole,” IW institute economists wrote in a recent report for the Christian Democratic Union party, which is in opposition in Berlin and opposes the measures. Scrapping the plan is “urgently needed from an economic perspective to prevent wider damage to the Berlin economy,” they added.
Observing Hermann 